Trees or shrubs, usually with depressed, sessile glands on leaves and flowers
Leaves
opposite or rarely in whorls of 3, digitately compound with 3-5(7) leaflets, mostly petiolate; leaflets entire, toothed or lobed
Flowers
regular or irregular, in many-flowered terminal racemes or axillary, determinate compound dichasia; bracts small, rarely exceeding calyx
Calyx
persistent, accrescent, 5-lobed; tube campanulate; lobes often reduced
Corolla
bilabiate, with tube white, lips mauve, with yellow markings at base; tube cylindric or narrowly campanulate or funnel-shaped, often curved and hairy externally as well as internally, upper lip 2-fid, the lower 3-fid
Stamens
4, arising at middle of corolla tube, didynamous, usually exserted; filaments thick, glandular, hairy at base; anthers dorsifixed, divergent, extrorse
Ovary
thick-walled; style terete, bifid, usually exserted
Fruit
a 4-loculed drupe, sessile on a firm, crateriform calyx, or a nut enveloped by an infundibular chartaceous calyx
x = 8 (6, 13, 17) (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
Vitex
L.
Linnaeus: 635 (1753)
Linnaeus: 285 (1754)
Baker: 315 (1900)
Pieper: 1 (1928)
Phillips: 639 (1951)
Verdcourt: 50 (1992)
Bredenkamp & Botha: 611 (1993)
Bredenkamp & Botha: 141 (1996)
Distribution & Notes:
Global
: Species 250, in tropical to temperate regions of the world
Southern Africa
: Species 8, N Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape
References:
BAKER, J.G. 1900.
Verbenaceae
,
Labiatae
.
Flora of tropical Africa
5
BREDENKAMP, C.L. & BOTHA, D.J. 1993. A synopsis of the genus
Vitex
L. (
Verbenaceae
) in southern Africa.
South African Journal of Botany
59
LINNAEUS, C. 1753.
Species plantarum
. Salvius, Stockholm
LINNAEUS, C. 1754.
Genera plantarum
, edn 5. Salvius, Stockholm
PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants.
Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa
No. 25
PIEPER, W. 1928. Vorarbeiten zu einer Revision der afrikanischen
Vitex
-Arten mit Berücksichtigung der übrigen.
Botanische Jahrbücher
62, Beiblatt 142
VERDCOURT, B. 1992.
Flora of tropical East Africa
.
Verbenaceae
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